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After having listened to Elon Musk, JB Straubel and Deepak Ahuja on the Conference Call yesterday, I have to conclude the following:

There is only one Assembly line, and this Assembly Line has now been upgraded (more efficient, more automation, resulting in a higher production capacity per week). Production will start again on August 4th, 2014. The Body Line will be upgraded in Q1 2015.

In reply to Ben Kallo with Robert W. Baird: "Regarding the production (capacity) increase to a level of 100,000 unit a year, by the end of next year. Some other step to get you to that level?"

Elon Musk: "Well, there is a big step that´s expected to occur in Q1 next year (2015). Which is the bring up of the S/X Body Line. So, what we did in the past two weeks is the Assembly Line, where it´s basically that the bits get put together. But then the Body Line is where the body itself is welded and bonded together, where in fact the core skeleton of the car is created ..... We are gonna bring the Body Line up in parrallel with the current Line. Unlike this case with the Assembly (Line), we didn´t have two complete Assembly Lines, we had to stop and retool. In the case of the new S/X Body Line, which is a line that has been designed to be capable of 2,500 units a week, maybe more than that. Conservatively 2,500 units a week. At a lower cost point. We should be able to do that in parrallel (Model S + Model X). Another really big upgrade is the Paint Shop. There are a few cases where advanced CapEx spending makes sense even though it's gonna pay of in two to three years. But it's such a big improvement that you kinda wanna do it, even at a high discount rate. Our Paint Shop is being upgraded and it's gonna be the most advanced Automotive Paint Shop in the world. It's expensive to do that."

My question now is: "Can we assume/conclude that the Tesla Fremont Factory will have a production capacity of at least 2,500 cars a week (Model S + Model X), by the end of Q1 2015?

Please post your comments/arguments both if you agree or disagree with this assumption/conclusion.

assuming 50 weeks and 100,000 target I think we can conclude that there should be at least production capacity for at least 2,000 cars a week (S + X) by the end of Q4 2015. We don't know if there is a production bottleneck downstream of the Body Line. Based on the comments however - 1. (assuming conservative word parsing) it seems that if there is a downstream bottleneck they should be able to improve by Q4 2015 to get to 2,500 per week and 2. (not so conservative) these comments, along with comments for demand, may indicate that they are shooting for something higher.

No way Tesla will have production capacity of 2,500 cars/week by end of Q1 2015. It takes a lot of moving parts to increase capacity and just because the Body Line has a theoretical capacity of 2,500 doesn't mean that the entire factory can produce that. You need to increase all segments of the line for that. Also, there are many parts that Tesla is producing internally as well. And suppliers have different timelines to ramp as well.

Tesla has a goal of producing 2000 cars/week by end of 2015 (ie., 100k annual production run rate), and that in of itself will be quite a feat to pull off.

I wonder if the most advanced paint shop in the world could translate to pick any color. Enter a paint code, paint to sample, etc.

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Better still, and another crushing blow to the rest of the industry - self-healing, nanotechnology. And even better would be if the owner could return to Tesla and they could communicate with the paint and have it change colors. That would be efficient because all cars would be painted the same neutral color and then programmed at delivery.

No way Tesla will have production capacity of 2,500 cars/week by end of Q1 2015. It takes a lot of moving parts to increase capacity and just because the Body Line has a theoretical capacity of 2,500 doesn't mean that the entire factory can produce that. You need to increase all segments of the line for that. Also, there are many parts that Tesla is producing internally as well. And suppliers have different timelines to ramp as well.

Tesla has a goal of producing 2000 cars/week by end of 2015 (ie., 100k annual production run rate), and that in of itself will be quite a feat to pull off.

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I think the bottleneck will continue to be battery/battery pack supply. You can make lots of skeletons, paint lots of cars but until the GF is up and running I doubt Panasonic can supply enough batteries by the end of 2015 to get to a production level of 2500/week. I think it is amazing that they feel so confident they will hit 2K per week by end of 2015

I think the bottleneck will continue to be battery/battery pack supply. You can make lots of skeletons, paint lots of cars but until the GF is up and running I doubt Panasonic can supply enough batteries by the end of 2015 to get to a production level of 2500/week. I think it is amazing that they feel so confident they will hit 2K per week by end of 2015

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Remember, Elon said without the GF they can still manufacture 150k-200k cars per year inn 2017.

I wonder if the most advanced paint shop in the world could translate to pick any color. Enter a paint code, paint to sample, etc.

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TM just bought a state of the art automated painting system from a German manufacturer. I remember reading about it but can't remember where...'old brain syndrome'. Anyone have that info? If we can get it and look up the equipment purchased it may give you a better idea of the capabilities in the new paint shop at TM. I recall it would allow TM to paint 500K vehicles per year.

Diarmuid O'Connell presented slides at TMC Connect that gave extra details about the factory expansion. He showed a phased expansion over the next three quarters:

Model S/X High Volume Assembly Line, Summer 2014

Battery Module Line 2, Summer 2014

High Volume Battery Pack Line, Summer 2014

Drive Unit Line, Autumn 2014

Model S/X Body Center, Early 2015

From my recollection of the factory layout and the slides he presented, the new High Volume Assembly Line and Drive Unit Line are in portions of the factory not currently in use, but the new Body Center area is (I think) part of the current production area, directly west of the stamping center.

Custom colors for extra $ could be profitable. It would be nice if the S and X could be almost any color. Bentley and Ferrari offer a really enormous palette. Their sites are fun to look at for colors.

Diarmuid O'Connell presented slides at TMC Connect that gave extra details about the factory expansion. He showed a phased expansion over the next three quarters:

Model S/X High Volume Assembly Line, Summer 2014

Battery Module Line 2, Summer 2014

High Volume Battery Pack Line, Summer 2014

Drive Unit Line, Autumn 2014

Model S/X Body Center, Early 2015

From my recollection of the factory layout and the slides he presented, the new High Volume Assembly Line and Drive Unit Line are in portions of the factory not currently in use, but the new Body Center area is (I think) part of the current production area, directly west of the stamping center.

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And yet what was reported was high failure rate of drive chains.........this would have been the info to present on tmc

I wonder if the most advanced paint shop in the world could translate to pick any color. Enter a paint code, paint to sample, etc.

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Brilliant. Why not? If the local Home Depot can make any color based on a code (using rgb and black cartridge like a printer) why couldn't this be done? Better yet why hasn't this been done already? No automotive paint expert here. Anyone in the field know the reasons?